The Farm-to-Table Kitchen

Farm-to-table here means our kitchen, not a concept

When we say farm-to-table, we don't mean a printed menu with a leaf icon next to it. We mean a small family kitchen off the dining room — two of us and the cook who has been with us since the first winter — and a decision made every morning about what to make from what the orchard, the kitchen garden and the Manali mandi actually gave us that week. Some evenings that's our own plums and apples turning into chutney. In peak apple season, September and October, it's fruit off our own trees. In deep winter it's whatever keeps well and warms you up, because the road to the mandi ices over and you cook from the store cupboard like every mountain household does.

We are honest about the scale of it. This is a home kitchen, not a hotel kitchen with a brigade of chefs and forty dishes on standby. That's the whole point. It is why the food tastes like someone's mother made it, and it is why we ask what you want to eat rather than hand you a card. If you need a wide buffet with live counters, we are not that. If you want a plate of dal, rice, a seasonal sabzi and a rajma cooked slow — sitting close enough to smell the tadka going into the pan — this is exactly that.

The dham-inspired thali guests come back for

The dish people ask about most is our take on a Himachali dham. A traditional dham is a festive vegetarian meal the Kullu valley serves at weddings and temple functions — cooked overnight by botis, the community cooks, and eaten sitting on the floor in a line. We don't pretend to serve a full ceremonial dham on demand; that takes a day and an occasion. What we do is cook the heart of it: madra (chickpeas or vegetables in a slow yoghurt gravy), sepu vadi (lentil dumplings in a spinach curry), a proper dal, rice, and a sweet mittha to close. Ask us a day ahead and we'll build a dham-style thali around whatever the season gives us.

The other name that comes up in guest messages is siddu — a steamed wheat bun, sometimes stuffed with a walnut-poppy paste, eaten with ghee or a green chutney. It is proper cold-weather Himachali comfort food and takes time to prove and steam, so it's a request-ahead dish rather than a whim. Mention it when you arrive and we'll usually manage it for one of your evenings.

A few things worth asking for by name

• The slow rajma-chawal — the dish that shows up most in our messages, best asked for at breakfast so it can cook down all afternoon
• A dham-inspired thali (madra, sepu vadi, dal, rice, mittha) — request a day ahead
• Siddu with ghee and green chutney — cold evenings, needs proving time, so ask early
• Orchard chutneys and stewed apple in season — September–October, from our own trees
• A simple ghar-ka-khana thali if you've been eating out for days and just want home food — this is the one families keep coming back to

Cooking with what the orchard gives us

Both homes sit in working orchard land — the flagship a minute off the highway at Badgran, about 14 km south of Manali; the Shanag house higher up, 4–5 km north toward Old Manali and the snow line. Apples are the obvious crop, but the kitchen garden and the valley give us more than fruit: greens through the warm months, walnuts in autumn, herbs at the door. When the harvest is on, the distance from tree to table is a short walk, and you'll taste it in the chutney at dinner or the apple on your breakfast plate.

Seasons decide the menu more than we do. Summer, May and June, is the easy time — greens, fresh produce, lighter plates you can eat after a day out at Solang or on a village walk. Autumn is apples and richer cooking. Winter narrows things down honestly: fewer ingredients, more from the store, hot food that earns its place next to the bonfire. We'd rather cook a short, good, seasonal meal than a long menu of things trucked in out of season.

We had one guest who asked, half-joking, if he could just have the same dal every night because he'd never had one like it at home. He did. Five nights, same dal. That's the kind of kitchen this is.

— — your hosts at Persimmon

Eating together, and asking for a special dinner

Dinner at Persimmon is one sitting, not a shift. There are no fixed dining hours to race, and we sit down with guests more often than not — that's where the food stories and half the Manali trip advice actually happen. In fair weather it moves out to the bonfire; a plate, a fire, the peaks going dark behind the orchard. It is the same whether you are a couple, a family with restless kids who need feeding early, or a pet parent whose dog is asleep under the table.

If you want to mark something — an anniversary, a birthday, a proposal, or just a meal you'll remember — tell us when you book or over WhatsApp before you arrive. Give us a day's notice and we'll plan a special dinner around it: a dham-style spread, a fire laid, the dishes you named. We can't do everything a full restaurant can, and we won't pretend to. What we can do is cook you one genuinely good, personal meal in a mountain orchard, the way we'd cook for people we know. message any of our numbers and just tell us what you love to eat.